Jump
by Stranded With Plums
Summary: Juat a conversation between Alice and an old friend from Wonderland.


Jump

Disclaimer: I own nothing having to do with Alice, Wonderland, or the Mad Hatter.

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It had been somewhere around three years since the incident. She never told anyone and no one ever asked. It was simply something that had been buried and left to die a silent death. If only the memories would disappear, but the mind has never been kind when forgetting the past. You either relive the pain or go off the deep end or do both. It could only be said that she tried her best to move on with life, but after such an experience could she ever expect life to be the same ever again. It was a stupid notion to consider such things. The heart and mind remember all. You can play with fire all you want, but you will get burned. This is not a fact that you will find highlighted in your textbooks, but instead a lesson learned from experience.

You see the problem does not lie within the experiencing of consequences that will surely ensue, but within the so-called pushing of boundaries. Once a person has stepped over the line once it has been found only much easier to step over it again. It is like playing Russian Roulette in the sense that one never knows when the last game has been played. Tempting the fates to only see the bottome fall out. Breaking the rules, pushing the tides, and blasting down walls are all part of the process to see just how much pain one person can handle. What is the threshold? A person can spend his whole life testing the answer to this question and never truly get a good solid answer.

She just happened to be one of these people who constantly stood at the cliff's edge wanting to jump, but never really having the nerve to leave the ground. Oh, but each day that passed the notion to jump became a little stronger and instead of doing such she just pacified the need with other sacrifices. She watched as her body slowly faded away, no longer needing nourishment to stay alive. Her heart had started to die years ago and her mind wasn't too far behind. She found no solace in the hearts of people nor in the daily routine of life. The truth of the matter was that she wanted to die, but something kept her here. She was grounded whether she liked it or not. She was just so tired from it all. Exhausted from the constant nawing fo the pain that she felt. She slept, sometimes all day, but even her dreams had turned into nightmares leaving her feeling nauseated. There was nowhere to escape and no one to run to. She had no one, but herself. Her mother would surely tell her to snap out of it and her father would send her to a mental institution. The only escape was to try and push the envelope and if she died then she just died. No big deal.

It was a Thursday morning and after a sleepless night she wandered around her apartment aimlessly searching for any source of comfort. It was beginning to be too much and the weight was becoming increasingly dangerous. The cutting didn't seem to help as much as it once did. Her mind began to wander back into the past and focused on one particular night when she had collapsed at work. She had eaten barely a drop of anything that day and had several cups of Starbuck's coffee. She knew what was going to happen if she didn't eat anything and to top it all off the headache that had shown itself earlier that morning had been treated with medicine containing large doses of caffeine. The boundary had been challenged and destroyed and over the edge she went. She remembered the fluttering of her heart and the loss of strength in her legs. Falling to the floor only to be caught by the strong arms of her friend nearby. The whole experience had scared her senseless, but once the initial shock was over she was fine. She knew how to get there again, how to brush death with the touch of her finger. Maybe there was a way out after all. Her mind shot back to the present and out of its reverie. Tonight was all she could think of from that point on.

_Flashback_

_She had just finished telling her story and now looked expectantly at the person sitting across the table from her. He said nothing and let not a trace of his thoughts cross his face. He just silently sipped at his tea, pausing only slightly to sit the cup down on the table and only to pick it up again. He sipped, she watched, and he sipped and she watched. Not a word passed between them and glances were even limited to the arching of eyebrows. The silence became quite deafening as it appeared that he was taking his time in commenting on her story. She could see the wheels turning in his mind and the thoughtful consideration that he was giving to the forming of his words. It really wasn't like him to take this long in forming a response to...well anything. He just sat there stirring his tea with his finger and adding more sugar when required. _

_He finally looked up slowly with a slight flicker of resolution in his eyes. The words he spoke where not of any great theologian, but just words when placed to together made perfect sense. She left that day from the table not with beauty in her hands, but understanding._

_"Alice...jump" and with a twisted grin the Madd Hatter began sipping his tea again as his eyes flickered back down to the reflection in the cup._

The End


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